Existing cremation techniques employ non-renewable energy fuels such as oil, gas, coal, or wood, which are becoming increasingly costly. Moreover, existing methods are unaesthetic, commonly involving the horizontal sliding or vertical descent of a corpse into an oven with psychologically undesirable connotations. Vertical descent, whether into a furnace or a grave, to the religious, may have connotations also of hellfire and damnation of the soul, as compared to the symbolisms of ascent upwards to Heaven, which, for the bereaved, is a much more acceptable symbolism, but which has not been available to date in any funeral facility. More basically, it has been man's dream for many thousands of years, particularly in ancient Egypt and in the Aztec religion, to be symbolically reunited in death with the sun as God and as the ultimate source of all life upon earth. The present invention makes this possible.